Bridgend 5th June 2016

Woke up to a beautiful morning and what looked like a steady breeze in Innerleithen, and it looked stronger than the 6mph in the forecast.

I was willing to wait till later on to see if things improved. I then remembered we had an estate car with plenty room so I suggested a family trip to St Marys Loch for a paddle, ice-cream and hopefully a flight.

St Mary’s Loch was jumping with campers, motorbikes, paddlers and sailors. I left Val and co with the car and at 3 o’clock I started climbing. Got to launch area at 3:30pm and it felt good to me - 6-9mph steady breeze coming straight up the valley with clear blue sky.

Jamie called to ask about the conditions and said he would be over in 3/4 of an hour, so I decided to give it a go planning on boating about and top landing again.

Launch was good but I wasn’t getting any height. The last time I was at Bridgend I got lift near the Rodono but not this time. I didn’t venture too far round (far enough) into the Megget valley so I decided that landing was going to be the best option after only 10 minutes.

After a very nice landing I thought the best thing to do was to call and warn Jamie that conditions weren’t as good as I thought, but he was already well on his way.

Jamie arrived so we climbed back up the hill. He thought that the conditions were ok and I thought I’ll let Jamie launch first so I could watch and follow him.

He gave me a tip of applying a little brake when in lift to prolong the time you spend in the zone and that’s what I did.

We spent an hour boating about and getting much more lift in the Megget valley. Jamie did a top landing, then I got the “I’m bored and the dogs are hungry” call.

Time to land and go home. All in all it was a good day and I enjoyed getting off the ground again.

Andrew Brunton.